Pangnirtung (Jun 05/06) - A May walk along the shore became a scientific odyssey for Andrew Dialla of Pangnirtung.

Dialla was out with his five-year old daughter Megan when the pair stumbled across a fist-sized skull poking out of the ground.

A head-on shot of the unusual skull found by Andrew and Megan Dialla of Pangnirtung. Scientists are eager to get their hands on the skull. - photo courtesy of Uqqurmiut Arts Centre

"I thought it was a caribou," Dialla said. But the skull is too small to have antlers, and the mystery animal has stumped elders and scientists alike.

"People who have life-long experience eating and butchering caribou say it's not a caribou," Dialla said.

Richard Harington, a zoologist with the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa and an expert in ice age mammals, was one of the scientists Dialla contacted.

"I'm very curious to see it," he said. Harington is hoping to get his hands on the skull to examine it, because it's hard to determine exactly what it is through photographs.

He said antlers typically don't develop in an animal this size.

"You would have to consider things like some unusual type of pathological effect (like disease or birth defects)," Harington said.

Inquiries Dialla made to the Viking Answer Lady website turned up nothing. Australian researchers whom Dialla thought might be familiar with warm-weather mammals that once populated Baffin Island also had no answer.

Dialla said he's had offers from Harington as well as Washington D.C.'s Smithsonian Institution to examine the skull, but he hasn't made up his mind if he wants to send the skull away.